Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr., KBE, DSC, K.st.j. (December 9, 1909 - May 7, 2000) was an American actor and a highly decorated naval officer of World War II.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was born in New York City, the son of actor Douglas Fairbanks and his first wife, Anna Beth Sully. His parents divorced when he was ten years old. He lived with his mother in California, Paris, and London.

Biography

Largely on the basis of his name, he was given a contract at age fourteen with Paramount Pictures. After making some undistinguished films, he took to the stage, where he impressed his father, his step-mother Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, who encouraged him to continue with acting.

Fairbanks starred in several pre-Code films with Loretta Young, and supported Katharine Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role in the film Morning Glory (1933).

With Little Caesar, Outward Bound, Gunga Din and The Dawn Patrol, his movies began to have more commercial success.

Fairbanks has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6318 Hollywood Boulevard and one for television at 6665 Hollywood Boulevard.

He died of a heart attack in New York at the age of 90. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California, in the same crypt as his father.